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Friday, 23 July 2010

Our sample of Incorrect English comes today from a news article by Philip Elliot, who writes:

The endorsement comes as Rubio, a surprise candidate who forced Gov. Charlie Crist to abandon his campaign for the Republican Party's nomination in the race and is instead running as an independent, reported some $4.4 million in campaign cash.

I'm sure that Philip intended us to understand that Charlie Crist is running for the Senate as an independent, but that's not what he wrote. Let me break the sentence down a bit to explain:

Since the Appositive clause takes the same subject as the Subordinate clause, we can switch them around and should get the same result:

A surprise candidate who forced Gov. Charlie Crist to abandon his campaign for the Republican Party's nomination in the race, Rubio is instead running as an independent.

Ah, but it is Crist, not Rubio, who is running as an independent. The original sentence should have read:

The endorsement comes as Rubio, a surprise candidate who forced Gov. Charlie Crist to abandon his campaign for the Republican Party's nomination in the race and run instead as an independent, reported some $4.4 million in campaign cash.

1 comment:

Alas, this particular form of mangling the English language is now so widespread as to be tantamount to standard usage. Although it's still confusing, it is no more so than the quite correct but rather ambiguous statement:Pursuing girls can be fun.